Why Your Congressman Has More Character Than Mother Theresa

Why don’t people like politicians? Is it because they’re bad people? Is it because good people can’t make it to the top? It’s hard to say exactly why, but there is no disputing the fact that Americans don’t think particularly highly of their elected officials. Filibusters have dramatically spiked under president Obama and public vitriol is as vitriolic as it has ever been. I posit three causes of this problem and three possible reasons to be optimistic.

First, our electoral system encourages the kind of behavior that Americans have grown to abhor—name-calling, partisanship, refusal to compromise, and a general tone of negativity—because of the way congressional elections are setup. The American public asks the following of elected officials: perform your duties to serve the public interest in the most unstable environment imaginable to forge a career of longevity. Imagine a job where every two years, someone who has probably never met you attempts to take your job away by going to great lengths to assail your character. You might crack from time to time.

Second, it takes a particular kind of good person to excel at politics. The Mother Theresas of the world eschew politics not necessarily because they are above the fray, but because they know how difficult it is to function in that kind of environment. Those that pursue careers in politics are good people that want to make a difference, but, unfortunately, have to go through this dirty process called public elections to get there. Next time you criticize the moral composition of your elected officials, have a little sympathy. When you make a career of helping the poor and diseased in deeply impoverished countries, it’s pretty easy to look good. Not so much when you want to make public policy.

Third, whatever short-comings our elected officials may have, it is the structure of the political system that causes it, not some kind of inner evil that dwells in the hearts of all aspiring politicians like an alien waiting for the right moment to break through a senator’s sternum. IR theorists like to blame the structure of the international system for the outbreak of wars. If you want to get a grasp of why politicians say and do some whacky things, they might just be whacky. But they also might be victims of a tricky system.

Fortunately, there are three positives to take away. First, Congress is small. There are only 100 senators and 435 representatives (I paid attention in 11^th grade U.S. History). This means that individual leadership and action are possible. In the past, single transformative leaders have shifted events in a positive direction and abetted compromise. While the system rewards myopia, it also rewards individual initiative. Second, and more importantly, a great deal of the laws that are written and certainly the policies that are implemented are the handiwork of dedicated government bureaucrats, not elected officials. It’s a team effort and in a nation of 300 million, no group of 535 people can go it alone. Third, all of these issues are what the Internet has come to call “first world problems.” This is especially salient in light of the hurricane damage in the northeast which has left thousands homeless.

In light of all this, there’s just not a whole lot of justification for getting really angry at politics. The 50% of Americans who will wake up on November 7^th to bad news about their candidate should for at least one day try to show a semblance of perspective: many people in the world are not educated enough to know just how envious they should be of the American way of life.